Moved it all twice…
On Tuesday morning, I overslept until 6AM and was running around trying to get ready to do windows at 8AM. I waited until I actually saw someone here before starting to clean out the bathroom window.
The truck pulled into the end of the driveway at 5 minutes to 8. The driver sat in the truck. I checked it every time I made the 20’ trip back and forth past the front door, carrying stuff from the bathroom window to the kitchen for washing. I probably made 7 trips in the 5 minutes.
Then the truck heads up to the barn and leaves. What???
Bathroom all apart still…
Well you can’t reach anyone at his company until 9AM. I called a couple numbers I had but it wasn’t the right department I reached and I left a message. So I put everything back into the window and went to finish my post for the day.
They call me at 8:45AM and said they’d get back to me once they reached the worker.
By 9:15AM I hadn’t heard anything so I finally reached a case manager at the agency that hires the company and told them I was fed up with this happening each year and to please cancel the contract and find a more reliable company. They said that there weren’t that many companies left that did “heavy work” but they’d put it out there.
The company called back at 9:40AM, said the guy had knocked twice and then left. Sigh… As I said, I wasn’t more that 20’ from the door during the whole time and never saw him walk the 40’ from the truck and back. They said he was coming back. So I waited until he was actually here to start taking stuff out of the bathroom again.
Dining room trashed
So we got past all that when he arrived. I showed him where the ladder was and he got set up outside. Inside I was zooming back and forth emptying the bathroom window so it could be washed inside.
Turns out he had a painting company until Covid so he was fine on ladders. He did a good job on the windows, once he understood how I wanted them done.
I had to keep emptying windows as we went. I usually empty them before the worker arrives, but I was not doing it several times per window. So it was a lot of work for me to keep up with him as he worked outside.
Living room trashed
When we made it around to the back porch it was just after noontime. The original shift was 8 – 12PM. We’d worked 2 hours and were only half done. So I asked if he was supposed to go at 12 or work until 2PM to finish the shift. He said he had another person after me and could work to 1PM. So we kept going.
Clean window view from dining room
We made it to the bedroom window and got that done before he had to go at 1PM. I got the screen in the bedroom vacuumed and the grille washed and back in the window, so that room was done.
My helper friend had arrived at 10:30AM and done some errands, went out to the New Herb garden and cut down the garlic chive seed heads, cut off the evening primrose seed heads and spread them in the wildflower area, and took the pods off the butterflyweed and spread them in the wildflowers.
Then he made me some lunch of a tomato and cheese sandwich from a tomato we had missed on the shelf of the roundtop. I had also found 2 half dried Kapiya peppers there and he got those cleaned up and into the pepper bag in the overflow freezer.
View out the clean roundtop window
He did a few odd jobs around the house as I did windows and saw things for him to do. I washed the 2 large grills for the dining and roundtop windows as they are delicate and shouldn’t be out of the windows for long.
He left a little early and I sat down for a while and folded another roll of paper towels for Wednesday. I kept trying to clean up some of the mess, but was just too wiped out.
He’d picked me up some supper when he was out so I heated that up, pulled the shades, and eventually got the fire started in the wood stove. I went to bed at 8:30PM.
On Wednesday the window guy will be here at 8AM, my #2 intern will be here at 11AM to work on cleaning out the Big garden, I have a propane delivery in the morning, and I’m hoping to get up early and get some of the mess cleaned up before I have to trash the office for the day’s window washing.
